


All This Time

by Giggleloop



Category: BeamNG.drive (Video Game), Car Boys (Web Series)
Genre: Car Boys - Freeform, Gen, Post Finale, rated T for curse words, spoilers for Car Boys obviously, spoilers for The Adventure Zone episode 64
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 13:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11185635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giggleloop/pseuds/Giggleloop
Summary: They sat quietly for a while, the only sound between them the gentle piano from the radio. Griffin's gaze remained locked on his side mirror, his brow furrowed in thought.When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and thoughtful. “Maybe we can use this. Nick… maybe this is how we can get out of here.”





	All This Time

**Author's Note:**

> Updated note: in spite of everything that has happened at Polygon over the last month or so... Car Boys still means so much to me. It always will. And I'm damn proud of what I wrote. So it's not going anywhere. I hope that folks can still enjoy it for what it is, just like I am trying to continue to enjoy Car Boys for what it was, and what it means to me.
> 
> See you, Space Carboys.
> 
>  
> 
> My friend Bec & I were discussing the Car Boys finale, and they said, "You know what I'd like to read? Escape from the Time Ring." I rattled off a few paragraphs back to them, and the idea for this fic was the result.
> 
> So here is my take on the post finale events of Car Boys. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Thank you so much to Bec and Seb for beta & feedback. You're both awesome & inspiring. <3
> 
> NOTE: Does contain mild spoilers for The Adventure Zone episode 64!
> 
> ~~
> 
> Fic title from Jonathan Coulton's "All This Time", from his album "Solid State". While not directly inspirational to the events of this fic, it was my soundtrack & emotional focus while writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvVNxqosZ7s

Time, as they knew it, had ceased to exist for them. Griffin had tried keeping track of the days - as much as the concept of “time” even mattered here - when they’d first entered the Time Ring, as they dubbed it. But after a couple of weeks his watch battery had died and that had been the end of that.

There was no other way to mark time here, no rising or falling sun, not really. Although they did occasionally drift past some sort of horizon line - a distant forest of pine trees cast in negative, its foliage glowing a dark burgundy against a steel gray sky - there were no stars in their space, no constellations or planets, nothing but streaks of colored light that passed them by in a vertical direction.

Even determining _up_ or _down_ was difficult. The Ibishu Pessima LX, in addition to falling in what one would generally call a “downward” direction, also was slowly rotating laterally - so that their fall was actually sort of a spiraling descent, like a leaf tumbling on a current of wind, through a tunnel of swirling abyss, a terminal velocity with no terminus.

Ahead of them - _below_ \- in the distance, they could see Ball, orbiting lazily around the edges of the tunnel, passing them by occasionally. Just behind them - _above_ \- was the Ovo, in its own trajectory, visible in their side mirrors as it floated along. And ever present, following them relentlessly, was the dark shadow of The Blob. The only positive result from their gambit into the Time Ring was the knowledge that The Blob had followed, and was trapped in here just like they were.

 

The first few… weeks? months? of their imprisonment were full of activity. There was a lot of chatting about nonsense, anything to entertain them. A lot of idle silliness, including singing along with Elton John hundreds of times, until their voices were hoarse.

Nick described in detail the plots of every anime and manga he could recall. Most of them Griffin had never heard of, and after a while he began to wonder if Nick was just making them up now, creating his own ridiculous stories for Griffin's amusement.

“ _Nicolas_. There is no way that I can believe that there is an anime called _My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy._ It’s just not _possible_ ,” Griffin giggled, rolling onto his side on the reclined passenger seat to face Nick.

“Well, it’s called Noucome for short, and it was a manga first.”

Griffin let out another guffaw, wiping tears from his eyes.

“So Kanade has this curse called _Absolute Choices_ –“

“AHAHAHAHAHAHA of course he does!”

“- and he has to choose from these options that appear, and it happens at random, and he has no way of knowing what the choices will be. And all kinds of fucked up shit happens-“

“Because anime,” Griffin snickered.

“Griffin, if you’re not going to take this seriously,” Nick replied sternly, stone-faced, and then collapsed with laughter as well, the Pessima shuddering slightly from the force of their combined chuckling.

 

In quieter moments, they shared their life stories. Everything they could remember. Things they already knew about each other and things they’d never shared with anyone else. Until they knew every memory, every anecdote, everything they would ever have wanted to tell each other. Until each of them contained an encyclopedic knowledge of the other.

For his part, Griffin told Nick all the stories he had planned for The Adventure Zone. Every bit of world building he'd created, things he'd been so excited to share with his father and brothers.

“And so they all had to create some great works to present to the Light of Creation. I was going to let them choose, Justin and Travis and Dad, but I had already worked out that Lucretia was going to do a painting, and Davenport would do… I dunno, a song maybe? Haven’t decided yet really.

“And then, the best bit – Barry and Lup were going to compose something together. A beautiful classical piece, a - a duet. I have it all written out, talking about how they had the greatest luxury two people in love could possibly have – they had… Time.” His voice drifted off as he stared out into the swirling vortex of the Time Ring. After a moment, he took a deep breath and sighed.

“Griffin…” He felt Nick’s hand rest lightly on his forearm, gentle, tentative, and rather than comforting him it sparked a rage in him he hadn’t felt since before they became trapped in this place. He jerked away from Nick’s touch and spun to face him.

“You should have told me, Nick. If you had even the _faintest_ idea of what might happen to us, you should have told me!”

“I didn’t know! Not really. How could I have known?!”

“You suspected something was going to happen, goddamn it. I KNOW you did. Enough that you told me you needed a couple days to get ready for our last simulation. But you failed to mention, ‘oh hey, by the way, best bud, there’s a chance we might not make it back from this one, so like, maybe leave a note or a voicemail or something for your FUCKING FAMILY.’ We’re trapped here, and I didn’t even – even get to say –“ Griffin’s breath caught in his throat, choked by a sob trying to escape.

“Griffin – “ Nick tried again, his hand hovering over Griffin’s shoulder.

“Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t look at me, I don’t even want to talk to you.” Griffin squeezed past Nick through the gap in the center and flopped onto the back seat, curling up with his back to Nick.

 

They spent a few days in simmering silence, with a grudge held between them that seemed to poison the air. Griffin stirred upon hearing a muffled sound from the front seat and sat up, scrubbing a hand over his tired eyes. Nick was balled up in the driver’s seat, curled in on himself against the door. Griffin could see his shoulders shuddering as he sobbed silently.

Griffin sighed and reached out to place a hand delicately on Nick’s back. He felt Nick stiffen under his touch, and heard him sniffling, trying to cover up his crying.

“Nick. Bud. Look at me,” Griffin said softly.

Nick rolled over, wiping at his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “Griffin, I am so sorry. About all of this. And if you hate me for the rest of eternity, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. We are trapped here and it’s all my stupid fault and I – I’m –“ His breath hitched as he tried to hold back another sob.

“Whatever either of us did before now doesn’t matter. We’re here now, and at least we have each other, right? At least we’re not alone. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I forgive you. I’m not gonna spend the rest of our possibly eternal lives sulking in the backseat. Okay?”

Nick looked up at him, a weak smile on his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, bud. C’mere.” Griffin leaned forward and awkwardly reached over the center armrest to pull Nick into a hug. They embraced briefly, and Griffin felt Nick’s arm reach past them to spin the volume dial on the radio up.

“Such a tender moment, figured we need some mood music,” Nick said, holding in a giggle.

“Oh, Nicolas,” Griffin playfully swooned, the back of one hand to his forehead. “Such a gentleman.” When the chorus came around, they both sang along loudly, joyfully, smiling and laughing.

 

When they needed downtime, they rested in reclined seats or took turns sprawling in the back. They never slept, not really, because they seemed to find they didn’t really need it. Even if they managed to fall into a sleep-like state, when they awoke, it seemed as if only seconds had passed, due to the bizarre nature of time in this place, so they rarely bothered.

Frustration was building up in both of them, slowly but surely, an inevitability of their purgatory. They began taking out their shared anger on the Pessima. Having discovered that rolling the windows down didn’t affect their safety - they weren’t sure what the atmosphere was here, or if there was one to speak of, but they didn’t suffocate or implode with the windows down - Nick decided to kick the shit out of the side mirror, yelling while Griffin cheered him on, himself having wrenched the headrest out of the top of his seat, stabbing its metal posts into the dashboard.

The side mirror finally gave, breaking off and jettisoning out into the void, Nick giving a whoop of delight at its departure. Griffin cackled and reached for the radio, thumbing the Eject button and violently ripping the Elton John cassette tape from its mouth.

“FUCK YOU, ROCKET MAN!!!” he cried out, fingers plucking the fragile tape from its plastic casing, threads of brown entangling in his hands as he tugged and shredded it --

The Pessima gave a vicious **_jerk_** , and both Nick and Griffin froze.

Griffin looked down at his hands and screamed, “Uhhhhhh, Nick?!” The bits of cassette tape he held were morphing, shifting, glitching - small movements at first that quickly became more and more noticeable - jerking into angles and polygons and growing larger each time.

“Griffin, holy fuck, GRIFFIN!” Nick cried out, pointing to the dashboard. The gray plastic was warping and twisting, becoming angular and jagged in front of their eyes.

“Oh god, I’m sorry, Sir Elton, please don’t kill me. I’m too young to die!” Griffin shrieked, trying to somehow force the bits of tape back into the radio.

Suddenly there was a bright _flash_ , and Nick noticed in his field of vision a small text box that read “ **Instability detected for vehicle vehicles/midsize/: resetting the vehicle and disabling the physics** ”. He blinked furiously, trying to get the spots out of his eyes enough to see--

 

\--and saw Griffin seated beside him, in the Pessima. The undamaged, restored Pessima. Mirrors intact, Elton John playing softly from the radio.

“What. The. Fuck. Nick,” Griffin said shakily, his knuckles white from clutching the armrest between them and his door handle.

“I… I dunno. I guess if the car takes enough damage, even in here… the simulation resets it?” Nick hesitantly patted his own chest, legs, and head. “I mean, it feels like I’m all here still. You good?”

Griffin did a cursory check and said, “Other than however many years that just took off my life, yeah, I guess I’m good.”

They sat quietly for a while, the only sound between them the gentle piano from the radio. Griffin's gaze remained locked on his side mirror, his brow furrowed in thought.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and thoughtful. “Maybe we can use this. Nick… maybe this is how we can get out of here.”

“Griffin...?”

“I know, it’s the longest of longshots, but hear me out. Ball is still there, right?”

Nick leaned forward in the driver’s seat, looking out over the hood of the Pessima into the swirl of color and darkness, seeing the black and white form of Ball ahead of them. “Yeah, it’s still there.”

“You know how it crumples and reforms on the reg?”

“Poor Ball,” Nick said mournfully.

“Okay, so clearly Ball is unstable. But it always reforms. And when we just damaged good ol’ Pessi here, she respawned too, with us inside. Now, the Ovo is made of stronger stuff than us and it’s _defo_ stronger than Ball. But have you ever watched its orbit? Like, really watched it?”

Nick reached out his open window and angled the restored side mirror until he caught Ovo in its reflection, and watched carefully. The Ovo wasn’t falling straight downward either; just like them, it was moving in an arc, its pattern almost serpentine in nature, swinging back and forth. Nick followed its path, twisting the mirror back and forth, until --

He gasped, “Oh shit! Did you see that?”

The Ovo’s path had widened enough in its arc for it to strike one of the edges, the walls, of the Time Ring, and for a split second, its form had glitched. Not enough to godtrash it - not enough for it to warp and reform - but it had definitely taken some damage, however slight.

“Griffin… oh my god, Griffin, tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“If we could somehow… if we could get close enough to the Ovo when it’s damaged, when it glitches out - I think we could get inside it when it reforms. I think if we’re even TOUCHING it, that might be enough. And if we could get into the Ovo, maybe we could get the fuck out of here for GOOD.”

“But, Griffin, when we first got stuck in here, I tried controlling the Ovo, and it’s dead in the water. There’s no - no _directions_ here, I can’t tell it to go Up or Down or fucking Sideways or anything, because that doesn’t mean anything in this fucking place.”

“Right, but you were trying to control it remotely, through the BeamNG interface,” Griffin answered excitedly. ”If you were physically _in_ the Ovo, that might make all the difference! We’ve never really seen inside of it, but there _have_ to be controls, just like there’s a goddamn steering wheel and pedals in here.”

Nick sighed. “I dunno, man. That’s a pretty big risk.”

“Nicolas. We are looking at **eternity** stuck in here. And I’m _pretty_ _sure_ that both of us just **died** & were respawned in this fucking Pessima. Like, literally, what have we got to lose? Please tell me, because from where I’m sitting, that list is pretty fucking small.”

Nick thought a moment, and finally nodded. “Okay, Griffin. All right. We’ll watch it for now, we’ll plan it out. And then if it seems like we can do it, we’ll go for it.”

“Fuck YES. Making PLANS. Now we’re getting somewhere! Let’s celebrate with some SWEET TUNES!” Griffin grinned and cranked the volume on the radio.

 

~ ~ ~

 

They watched the Ovo carefully for the next little while. Each time its orbital arc swung wider and it struck the sides of the Time Ring, it did subtly glitch, but it didn’t seem damaged enough to reform completely. Not yet. It also appeared that every time it struck the walls, its trajectory changed slightly, and by some miracle, each new path seemed to bring it tantalizingly closer to the Pessima.

Griffin ejected Elton and turned to Nick, a serious look on his face. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. We can do a _little_ bit of damage to Pessi without her godtrashing on us, right? She only really flipped out when we went buckwild.”

“Yeah…?”

“So if I carefully take my headrest off, then I’m thinking maybe I could use the metal posts to very _gently and delicately_ cut through the seatbelts, and we can lock them together to make a tether--”

“GRIFFIN. I know you’re not seriously considering doing a goddamn SPACEWALK in the Time Ring!”

“The Ovo is getting closer to us all the time, but it’s also taking damage every time it hits the walls. I don’t want us to miss our chance! If the next hit is the one that causes it to fully godtrash and reform, then we’re fucked. We’d have to wait ages for it to happen again!”

“OK, so tell me about your super great plan, Sandra Bullock.”

“Nick. My sweet boy… did you – did you just make a movie reference? I’m… I’m so proud of you.” Griffin sniffled, wiping a fake tear away from his eye.

Nick playfully punched him on the arm. “Come on, seriously, what’s the plan?”

“All right, all right - so, seatbelts, tether--”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin tugged on the seatbelt cinched around his waist, making it as tight as he could while still being able to draw a breath. He double checked all the clasps, all securely fastened, all the carefully cut belts knotted and latched tightly together.

“This is nuts. This is a stupid fucking plan. Why did I think this was gonna work?” he muttered, and felt Nick’s hand rest on his shoulder.

“It’s not a stupid plan. It’s going to work. I know it is. We’re gonna get into that Ovo, and get the fuck out of this goddamn Time Ring for good. I know it.”

“Yeah?”

“I believe in you, Griffin,” Nick said softly, his eyes seeming to glisten a bit in the dim light from the car dashboard.

“Okay… okay.” Griffin swallowed, and leaned his head out the passenger window to gaze back at the Ovo, arcing slowly above them. He could make out its glowing white circular shape as its path crossed in front of the inky blackness of The Blob, which hovered in the distance, ever present.

“Okay, so when it swings back past us again, it should be on its way to hitting the far wall. So my plan is to get out there, get a hold of one of the seams between its panels, so we’re touching it when it hits. I think this time will be the one where it’ll finally glitch and respawn. But if it’s not, we can always try again, right?”

“Right. I’m gonna be right behind you,” Nick said, removing his belt from his jeans and securing it tightly around his forearm and the seatbelt tether. “As long as you’re touching Ovo, and I’m touching you, then in theory…? Who the fuck knows. I guess we’ll see, right?” He laughed nervously, tugging again at the belts.

“Nick?” Griffin said softly. Nick looked up to meet his gaze, surprised by the gently beaming smile that greeted him. “It’s gonna work. We’re going home.”

Nick pulled Griffin into his arms, wrapping him up in a tight embrace, his face tucked into Griffin’s shoulder. Griffin leaned his head against Nick’s, overcome and speechless by the show of affection by his best friend.

Too soon, Nick released Griffin with a sigh, his eyes focused on the mirror over Griffin’s shoulder. “It’s almost time. You ready?”

Griffin ruffled a hand through Nick’s hair, grinning. “Fuck yeah, dude. Let’s do this.”

Griffin sat on the window edge, his upper body out of the car, arms resting on its roof, watching the Ovo’s arc as it moved away from them on Nick’s side, nearly hit the far wall, and then slowly began its swoop toward them.

“Okay, I’m going out. Feed me some tether, and keep hold of my hand. Once I’m fully out, you follow behind me, got it?”

“Got it, Griff.”

He swung one leg outside the car, then the other, floating weightless in the void, and gave himself a small push off from the body of the Pessima. “Okay, a little slack, slow, slow.” He followed the Ovo with his eyes as it moved ever closer to him. He felt Nick clasp his hand, and gave it a squeeze. “Come on out, it’s getting closer.”

As the Ovo neared, both of them floated weightless near the Pessima, Nick giving the roof a tiny kick with his toe to extend their tether as far as it could reach, feeling the tension of the belts tighten, Griffin’s fingers still interlocked with his own.

“Almost there, you ready, Nick?”

Nick could see the Ovo now, it was nearly to Griffin’s position - and he could tell, it was going to miss them. By maybe a couple of inches max. Fuck. FUCKFUCKFUCK.

“Griffin - Griffin, it’s -”

“What?” Griffin called, not taking his eyes off the Ovo.

“You have to get it, Griff. I believe in you. I know you can do it.”

Griffin felt Nick’s fingers slipping from his grasp, and yelled, “NICK! No, what are you doing?!”

Nick reached for the seatbelt clasp between them on the tether and unclicked it, pushing against Griffin’s hand, sending him drifting free and giving him the few extra inches he needed to grip the side of the Ovo.

Griffin reached up and sunk his fingertips into the gap of the Ovo’s panels and clutched tightly, then turned his face downward, staring at Nick in horror. “NICK!” he cried, his free hand grasping at the space between them.

Nick looped his end of the tethering around his arm and pulled himself back toward the Pessima, hurtling into the open window and landing on the passenger seat - Griffin’s seat. He quickly spun and looked back up at Griffin, who was still holding fast to the Ovo as it struck the wall of the Time Ring --

\-- and their world exploded in a brilliant flash of white.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin blinked away the glare, waiting for his vision to clear. As it did, he saw before him a control panel, colored lights and buttons, none of them labelled of course, because why would they be. But he knew enough to recognize from the curved glass pane in front of him and the molded white metal seat beneath him, that he was in the Ovo.

 

Alone.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Nick was momentarily blinded by whiteness, and when his eyesight returned to normal, he could see the Ovo, new and sparkling and brilliant above him. And behind its curved glass window, streaked with reflections of red and blue and green, he thought he could barely make out a figure inside. Tears sprung to his eyes. Griffin had made it. He was piloting the Ovo now. He could find a way out now, back to the world, back to his family and the people he loved.

He waved up at the Ovo, but couldn’t tell if Griffin could see him or had returned the gesture. The Ovo was farther above him now, having reformed in its original orbit. Closer to The Blob, he realized in horror. But he wasn’t too worried - after all, Ovo had been the only thing able to stand up to The Blob before. Griffin would be okay now.

Safe. And soon, free.

Home.

Nick curled up in the passenger seat and cranked up the radio, sobs of relief wracking his body.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin thought he saw an arm waving out of the window of the Pessima below him, but it seemed farther away than it had been. Of course. When the Ovo had respawned, it did so in its original path. Nick was so far away from him now. And he had no way to tell him he was okay, no way to communicate with him. Fuck.

“Great job, Griffin,” he muttered to himself. “Stellar fucking plan. NOW what are you going to do??”

He immediately decided to get to work with the controls of the Ovo, to see if he could make some kind of sense of its design or features. He knew from their experiments with it previously that it had one button that would just power it on - the Go button, as it were. And that once it was powered on, they had been able to control its movements in all directions. Other than that, he was unsure of what functions or features the Ovo possessed. So he tinkered, and fiddled, and tested.

Try as he might, he couldn’t find any kind of communications or radio, which didn’t really surprise him. But after some process of elimination - during which he also found the seat adjustment controls, which seriously? - he did discover a meter that seemed to indicate the stability of the Ovo’s hull. It was fully green now, which he assumed meant 100%, since it had just respawned and hadn’t yet taken any new damage. Based on the amount of time they’d been trapped up to this point, he calculated that he had a long wait ahead of him before his new orbit would once again decay enough for him to begin striking the walls of the Time Ring.

“Okay, Nick, so here’s the sitch,” Griffin muttered to himself, finding the process of explaining things to Nick an easier way to work through things than just talking to himself. “I have myself a cherry, fresh off the line 2017 Ovo, and I have you stuck down there in a shitty underwater Pessima, and no idea how to drive this goddamn thing, or if I even can. And _if_ I can, where do I go? Up? Down? _Through_?? This is a real doozy, bud.

“The real question is… if I can figure out how to control this thing -- how do I get to you? Because I sure as **_fuck_** am not leaving you here. That is not a fucking option, Mister Nicolas ‘I Believe In You, Griffin, Just Leave Me Here And Save Yourself’ Robinson. NOPE. Nuh uh. So I’ve gotta get you in here with me somehow.”

He spent the next few units-of-indeterminate-Time-Ring-measure pressing every combination of buttons on the Ovo that he could possibly think of - to no avail. The Go button was a non-starter. Nothing was going to make this thing motivate in any kind of direction. The only function he was able to control was the goddamn seat.

Griffin was about to weep. “This just isn’t fair! I can’t… I can’t leave you here, Nick. _I won’t_.” In frustration, he banged his head back against the seat, pounding his fist on the armrest.

“I will get to you somehow, Nick. Even if I have to kick out the windshield of this piece of shit and freefall back into the Pessima. I’m not leaving you. I never… I never will.”

Hot tears coursed down his cheeks, and he _wished_ more than anything, with his entire being that Nick, his best goddamn friend in this entire fucked up universe, was beside him to tease him and grasp his hand and tell him everything would be okay.

Suddenly he felt a rumble from beneath him. The Ovo… He peeked open one eye, and saw an amber HUD reflecting on the glass in front of him, and some of the buttons on the console in front of him were shaded in amber too, with subtle directional arrows backlit from within them.

He let out a laugh, and clasped his hands over his mouth to stifle it. “You gotta be FUCKING KIDDING ME. Ovo, are you -- are you a ship of dreams? Are you POWERED BY WISHES?? You Tinkerbell ass motherfucker, I could kiss you.”

Clapping his hands excitedly, he started testing the controls and figuring out which ones maneuvered the ship’s steering and thrust.

“Sit tight, babe, I’m coming to get you!”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Nick sighed, twisting a strand of hair around and around his fingertips. He had turned off Elton John some time ago. The song didn’t cheer him without Griffin around to sing harmony with it or mock it relentlessly; it only twisted the knife of loneliness deeper with every replay. He’d been alone with his own thoughts for a while now.

Occasionally he would glance back at the Ovo, making its endless serpentine arc above him, and he wondered what Griffin was doing. If their plan had backfired worse than he could have imagined. Was Griffin there, or had the shadow he’d seen just been wishful thinking? What if Griffin _was_ there, but the Ovo didn’t have any controls? Had he trapped his closest friend in a goddamn glass bubble for the rest of their eternity?

After a while he stopped looking. He had to. The guilt of getting them trapped in this hell had already been bad enough but trying to reconcile dooming his friend a _second_ time, and cursing himself to loneliness forever in the process... it was too much to think about - he’d go mad if he didn’t stop.

He closed his eyes and rested his head on the reclined seat. He tried to remember what Griffin’s voice sounded like. What his smile looked like. The warmth of his embrace when they’d hugged just before -- He had no idea how long it had been, but he was terrified he was going to lose it, all of it; that one day he wouldn’t be able to remember Griffin ever being here with him. His heart twisted in his chest.

“Griffin…” he sobbed, burying his face in the upholstery. “I’m so sorry, Griffin. I never meant for any of this to happen. I just want you back.”

The Pessima shook violently, nearly unseating Nick, and he whipped his head up and around to see the most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed: the Ovo, colliding with the passenger side of the Pessima, with a madly grinning Griffin visible behind the glass. Nick waved and laughed, and watched as the Ovo reversed, trying to disentangle itself from the Pessima’s body.

Pessi wasn’t letting go, however, which caused Griffin’s brow to furrow. Clearly, this hadn’t been part of the plan. The Ovo was still reversing, its path leading to the walls of the Time Ring. Griffin’s gaze flicked down to the controls, and Nick gripped the Pessima’s door tightly as their vehicles skittered off the wall and arced away again, heading for the other side.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin’s initial plan was “ _batter the Ovo into the Pessima until they glitch out, grab Nick in the process, and hope that once everything reforms, we’re in the same vehicle, and then go from there_ ”. However, he hadn’t accounted for the fact that of course, the Pessima could take far less abuse than the Ovo, and his first hit had caused the two vehicles to fuse together somehow.

They careened wildly and slammed into the wall and Griffin was surprised to see the Ovo’s stability drop massively, more than fifty percent. He guessed it had to do with the added force of the Pessima crashing them into the wall? But either way, it looked like they could take one more hit between them before both vehicles became fatally unstable.

“Okay, fuck. How the… fuck! NICK!” Griffin yelled. He could see Nick staring at him, clutching the Pessima in fear, but there was no way Nick could hear him. The Ovo was pretty impenetrable, and no sound was getting out. SHIT.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Griffin! GRIFFIN! What do we do? Can you hear me? FUCK!” Nick yelled. He could see Griffin yelling too, but other than recognizing the shape of his own name on Griffin's lips, he couldn’t make out any words. Their fused vehicles were heading swiftly for the far wall, and he could see the absolute panic on Griffin’s face.

“GRIFFIN!!!”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin saw the far wall approaching swiftly, and locked eyes with Nick, hoping, _praying_ that he would understand him. He reached out both arms in Nick’s direction, took a deep breath, and with everything in him, screamed, **“JUMP! NOW, NICK! JUMP!!!”**

 

~ ~ ~

 

Nick saw Griffin’s arms outstretched toward him, his mouth open, screaming Nick’s name, and he did the only thing he could - he dove out the passenger window into the void, arms out toward Griffin, and closed his eyes.

The world around them exploded in a flash of white as the Ovo and Pessima collided with the wall and were destroyed.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Griffin slowly drifted back to consciousness. He felt foggy, his limbs heavy, as if he was awakening from the deepest sleep, a sensation he’d long forgotten. The warmth of a gentle hand rested on his cheek for a moment. Before he could open his eyes, he was enveloped in Nick's arms, trembling with adrenaline and shaking with sobs.

"Did it....did it work?" Griffin whispered, peeking open an eye, and seeing the Ovo's control panel - or a portion of it, as most of his view was blocked by Nick's body, which was astride him, arms encircling him.

“I thought I lost you, Griffin,” Nick muttered into the crook of Griffin's neck, clutching him tightly, alternating between laughter and gasping sobs.

“Hey. I was _never_ gonna leave you here alone. Not ever, Nick.” Griffin squeezed Nick tightly, reaching around him to press the seat adjustment control button to slide them back from the console a few inches. “There we go, much comfier.”

Nick sat back and yelped out a laugh. “Hang on. All this time over here, were you fucking around with getting the seat adjusted how you like it??”

“ _Listen_. I'm not gonna spend eternity with a cramp in my leg,” Griffin said dryly, and then grinned.

“Now, what do you say we go home?”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my take on the Car Boys universe. It's a fun sandbox to play in, and I loved writing this. While I did try to incorporate some of real!Nick and real!Griffin's personalities and life stuff in the story (like mentioning TAZ and the other McElroys), I did stop short of including Griffin's wife and son. I hope that isn't too jarring - but my reasoning behind it was that I thought it was bad enough that both of them left their families behind; having Griffin trapped away from Rachel & Henry was too dark for me, I couldn't do that! (It's fiction, after all!)


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